


A Heart That's Broke (Is a Heart That's Been Loved)

by pretive



Category: Phandom/The Fantastic Foursome (YouTube RPF)
Genre: Angst, Cancer, Death, Ed Sheeran - Freeform, M/M, Major character death - Freeform, Phan - Freeform, Phandom - Freeform, Phanfiction, Sad, Songfic, phanfic
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-07-20
Updated: 2017-07-20
Packaged: 2018-12-04 16:46:56
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,746
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/11559321
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/pretive/pseuds/pretive
Summary: Dan opens his eyes just a bit. “If I didn’t wake up tomorrow, is there anything you’d wished you told me?” He murmurs, and Phil’s body goes tense. Bile rises into his throat and he’s got uncomfortable tingles in his chest.Dan has cancer, and Phil tries to stay positive.





	A Heart That's Broke (Is a Heart That's Been Loved)

**Author's Note:**

> Trigger Warnings: death, major character death, angst, cancer, sadness, slight depression

‘I took the supermarket flowers from the windowsill’

Phil walks into the room, cautious to avoid disturbing the sleeping body in the bed. He carefully opens the blinds and sets the bouquet of lilies and daffodils on one of the hospital trays. Phil takes to work cleaning up his mess of a sleeping area, folding up his blankets and pouring his tea down the drain of the sink nearby.

The sheets wrapped around Dan’s body are haphazard and wrinkled, and Phil carefully tugs at them to straighten them out. Phil does his usual rounds around the room, making sure that Dan’s water cup is filled and that his vitals looked normal. He changes out the bouquet and sets them out on the table by the door for the nurse to take to someone else who’d enjoy them. Phil makes sure that all the tiny droplets of water on the sink and fountain are cleaned up and that everything seems crisp, something he did to distract himself while Dan slept.

A nurse taps lightly on the door and smiles at Phil, who gives her a small smile back. She lifts Dan’s hand to readjust his reader and he stirs awake.

“Sorry, didn’t mean to wake you. How are you feeling Daniel?” She asks, pricking his pinky in a new place, taking a swatch, and putting a plaster on it. Dan winces, and looks over at Phil with a tired smile. The nurse is checking different machines and vitals, pressing on different areas of Dan with her stethoscope and listening to his breathing while Phil moves a chair beside Dan to hold his free hand. “The next dose of Cladribine will be at 14:00, intravenously. For now, just rest up. Daniel, try to get some food down. I’ll be in at 13:30 to set things up.”

The nurse picks up the bouquet on her way out, and shuts the door. Dan releases a few harsh sounding coughs, making Phil wince.

“I hate when they speak like that. It makes me feel more inferior than usual.” Dan mumbles, and Phil squeezes his hand softly. His fingers had gone bony and pale and cold, but Dan was still Dan, and Phil presses a kiss to them.

“You’re not inferior. You’re superior. I don’t see many people smiling and joking through a chemotherapy treatment. Nobody else has as much hope as you in this hospital, other than me of course.” Dan gives him a small grin, but his eyes flit down and then to the window.

There’s a couple of storm clouds out, and it wouldn’t surprise Phil if it began to rain again. He’d missed the brunt of it on his flower escapade. Dan lets his head relax into the pillow behind him and sighs.

Dan opens his eyes just a bit. “If I don’t wake up tomorrow, is there anything you’d wished you told me?” He murmurs, and Phil’s body goes tense. Bile rises into his throat and he’s got uncomfortable tingles in his chest.

“I don’t know. Is there anything you’d wished you told me?” Phil nudges him, a small smile leafing over his lips.

Dan lets his head loll to the side to face Phil. “Two things, actually.” Dan says, and Phil moves close, instantly serious. He had to know what Dan needed to tell him; it would devastate him if Dan had died with unfinished business. “When I saw your first video, my internet search history was completely full of your videos and porn. My mum must have been so concerned. That’s probably how she knew I was gay. Also, I was the one who broke your Buffy CD, it wasn’t our guests. I’m sorry.” Phil rolls his eyes with a fond smile.

“Is that all? No secret tail or weird fetish you’ve never told me about?” Phil jokes, and Dan gives him a weak but amused grin.  
  
“I think it’s just to hide that I’m secretly a furry.” They laugh until Dan starts coughing again, to which Phil presses Dan’s water into his hand. Dan drinks it quickly, laying back onto the stiff mattress to calm his breathing down. “But really, I regret how much shit we gave each other over coming out. You really do only live once. It’s ironic how it took this to realize everything.” Phil’s eyes are glazing over, and he thinks Dan’s are too. “Because as soon as we put up the video telling everyone, we never got shit from anybody.  
“Maybe it’s just because we had to include all of this shit in the same video and no one had the guts to hate on the walking dead.” Dan’s voice shakes, and Phil shakes his head in response, wiping his eyes behind his glasses.

“Dan, don’t say that. You’re going to be fine. In a few months we’ll go home and we’re going to cuddle on that god forsaken couch and we’ll buy new houseplants to replace the ones I’ve neglected, and we’ll finally buy our suits and ties and adopt a cute little baby. Remember, that’s the plan.” Phil’s jaw is set to stop any sobs from coming through, despite the tears falling rapidly down his face. “You and your plans Dan. Remember?”

Dan nods, tears beginning to fall down his face as well, body beginning to shake. “I really don’t want to die Phil. But I feel it.”

“Stop it Dan.”

“Don’t you think I would if I could? Cancer isn’t something you can stop, Leukemia doesn’t stop for you, it won’t stop for the doctors or nurses, it won’t stop for me. I need you to get everything in the clear right now, please. You’d hate yourself if you left something unsaid, I know you. You’d spend the rest of your life dwelling on it and suffering in silence.”

Phil stares at Dan for a long moment, and eventually his hand finds Dan’s cheek, wiping away tears. He leans over Dan and wraps him up in his arms, Dan reciprocating weakly.

“I regret hurting you like I did in 2012, ruining the entire year of 2013 for us. I regret storming out the night I did, I regret kissing another man like he was you. I regret not giving you a better life, I regret not inviting you to more family vacations and Christmases when yours were insufferable. I regret not saying I love you enough times. But I’ll never regret answering your tweet, meeting you, falling in love with you.” Phil’s voice is unsteady, some of it coming out harsh while some was spoke in a hush whisper.

Dan’s crying into Phil’s shirt. They’d never regret falling in love with each other.

-

‘Spread your wings as you go, and when god takes you back he’ll say hallelujah you're home.

“What do you think it’s like in heaven, Phil? Assuming there is one and that God let’s me in.” Dan murmurs one night. Phil is pressed up behind him, arms warming him up. Since the cancer had spread and hit his lungs, Dan had felt much colder, and much less enthusiastic and hopeful as they attached him to a cannula and an oxygen tank.

Phil readjusts so his mouth isn’t pressed against Dan’s shoulder. “You’d get in. You’d spread those pretty white wings and he’d welcome you with a happy cry, just like your gran told you. But that’s going to be a long time coming, isn’t it?” Phil murmurs, trying to stay hopeful.

He tries to ignore the silent space before Dan murmurs a, “Yeah, I love you.”

“I love you too, Dan.”

-

Dan sat numbly through the chemo treatments, flinching and softly groaning. He couldn’t even answer Phil most of the time. When the doctors asked him about his pain level, he flashed all ten of his fingers. Phil could only cover his mouth and cry into it silently.

Dan’s eyes were sunken in and purple from exhaustion and fatigue. Any and all fat he’d once had had melted off of him, as well as colour. His fingers were always cold to hold, and Dan was constantly tensed up in pain from different cramps and nerve reactions, as well as disease his body couldn’t fight off. Dan clung to Phil like he was the only thing taking away the pain.

He would vomit up everything down to his stomach acid, and begged for relief. Phil rubbed Dan’s tense back, covered in light bruises and red spots. Dan’s hair was thinning quickly, but he insisted that they not shave it.

Phil didn’t sleep for fear of something happening. Dan’s arms would tense regularly, and he’d moan out in pain every few minutes. He kept whispering to Phil, ‘I love you’, and Phil would whisper it back three times.

-

‘A heart that’s broke is a heart that’s been loved.’

Dan passed away at 8:23 the next morning, after finishing his final I love you. Phil screamed in agony, leaning on the bed and refusing to release Dan’s hand. It was still and lifeless, and Dan was gone. They were going to lay him beneath the ground with a legacy above ground. Phil made a post after calling Dan’s family, heartbreaking while listening to his mother’s broken sobs and explaining to his brother what was going on.

  
'I hope that I see the world as you did, cause I know, a life with love is a life that’s been lived.’ 

Dan Howell, 25, of Wokingham has passed away today due to Acute Myeloid Leukemia. The internet star had shared with the world of his condition as well as his relationship with fiance Phillip Lester almost five months prior to his passing.

A day after the original announcement was made, Lester wrote another post addressed to Howell.

‘You were an angel in the shape of my mum.’

‘I know you’re up there right now planning a way to get back down, but I also know you’re not suffering anymore. You loved me through the pain, smiled and tried your hardest to stay positive despite things getting worse.  
‘I hope that I can see the world like that. I know that a life with love like you shared was a life well lived, and I can only hope to see you again one day, able to say the same thing. You were just like I had told you once, an angel in the shape of my wonderful Dan. I love you, spread your wings for me.’


End file.
